Jaanemonth: Chaar Din Ki Chandni

Chaar Din Ki Chandni (2012) has a classic Bollywood romance plotline; one half of a star-crossed couple must live with the family of their intended under false pretenses, along the way healing rifts, overturning prejudices, and ultimately winning over their stern and volatile prospective father in law.  It's the basis of several great movies, many of which star Shah Rukh Khan.  Unfortunately it's also the basis of a few crummy movies.

This time around, the star crossed lovers are Veer (Tusshar Kapoor) and Chandni (Kulraj Randhawa).  Chandni will be playing the SRK part this time; she's the daughter of caring and eccentric Punjabi stereotypes Fatoor Singh (Om Puri) and Pammi (Farida Jalal).  Veer, on the other hand, is the son of Rajput aristocrat Chandraveer "CV" Singh (Anupam Kher), who alternates between Kher's typical cuddliness and pointing rifles at the people who have disappointed him.

Veer's sister Divya (Shruti Sharma) is getting married, and Veer thinks that it's the perfect time to bring Chandni around to meet the family.  His mother Devika (Anita Raj) advises the couple to just get married quietly and settle in London instead; CV is so devoted to preserving aristocratic Rajput culture that he ended a long friendship with Paan Singh (Johny Lever!) just because Paan's son married into a non-Rajput family.  

Still, Veer is determined, up until the moment when he meets his father face to face.  Rather than tell the truth, he tells his father that Chanbdni is a reporter from London, here to do a story on the wedding.  (In the very next scene it's established that Chandni and Divya are friends, which would have been a much better and easier cover story, and nobody would have to wear a fake beard.  But, heat of the moment . . .)

Everybody thinks Chandni is great.  Veer's three brothers (Mukul Dev, Sushant Singh, and Chandrachur Singh) are immediately smitten, though his uncle Shaitan (Rahul Singh) thinks that something is going on between Veer and Chandni.  And then things get really complicated.  Chandni's parents arrive, thinking that Veer and Chandni have become engaged.  Veer introduces them as a famous Punjabi decorator and his assistant, and Fatoor and CV quickly become friends.

So far Veer has been doing all of the ill-advised lying, but now it's Chandni's turn.  CV asks her about her marital prospects, and she tells him that an astrologer told her if she doesn't get engaged in the next four days.  CV vows to find her a man, and his method is to ask Fatoor if he knows any good Punjabi guys, without explaining why he's asking.  Fatoor invents Pappi Sardar, but when it's clear that CV expects him to actually show up, Veer has to step up and play a double role.  At which point wackiness ensues.

Chaar Din Ki Chandni isn't a great romance; Kapoor and Randhawa have very little chemistry together, and spend most of their screentime dealing with their eccentric families.  Which is fine.  It wouldn't be the first romantic comedy that had to lean heavily on the comedy side.  Unfortunately, most of the jokes revolve around either unfortunate ethnic stereotypes or Veer playing vicious pranks on his brothers and uncle.  There are a few moments of genuine humor, mostly supplied by Johny Lever, and a few early jokes get satisfying payoffs, but the less said about the genuinely offensive subplot with the flamboyant wedding planner, the better.  

So, romance is out, comedy is out.  Family drama?  Not much.  Veer eventually learns to stand up to his father, and CV gets over his marriage issues, but that's really the only character development that happens here.  At the end, everybody is basically the same person, and most of those people are jerks. 

 

Jaanemonth 2023.

 It's February, and here at the Gorilla's Lament we are celebrating Jaanemonth, a month long celebration of Bollywood romance.  Join us for gratuitous musical numbers, noble sacrifices, and Shahrulh Khan standing with his arms extended.

Something weird, and it don't look good.

Watching the trailer, you might think that Phone Bhoot (20220 is a jumble of movie references and slacker comedy, and you would be right - that's exactly what Phone Bhoot is.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Sherdil Shergil (Siddhant Chaturvedi), known as "Major" to his friends, is an aspiring Lothario from Punjab and his roommate Galileo Parthasarthy (Ishaan Khatter), also known as "Gullu", is a goofy nerd from Tamil Nadu, but they are both idiots.  They're obsessed with horror movies, and have decorated their home with horror paraphernalia, all centered around a life-sized statue of Raaka, the monster from the Ramsay film Purana Mandir, which they scavenged from behind a movie studio.  

The pair are always upcoming up with new ideas for businesses, and those businesses always fail, because the pair insist on cramming ghosts into everything.  Their new big idea is a party planning business, but nobody comes to their debut (horror-themed) party.  And to make matters worse, Raaka's glowing eyes short out, and while Major and Gullu attempt to fix them, they wind up electrocuting themselves.  But only a little!

When they come to, the party is filled with people, none of whom show any interest in paying.  When they catch right of the mysterious but beautiful Ragini (Katrina Kaif) they forget about everyone else, but after the requisite musical number, Ragini is gone, the other partygoers are gone, and the police show up to arrest them for trespassing.

Major and Gullu are released, and Ragini follows them home and explains her deal - she's a ghost, everybody at the party was a ghost, and the boys can now see ghosts after their near death experiences. She also has a business proposition - the boys market themselves as ghostbusters and "exorcise" her from the people and places that she haunts.  They refuse, and then promptly turn around and steal her idea, marketing themselves as "Phone Bhoot,."

And once again, it's a complete failure - they may be able to see ghosts now, but the hotline gets nothing but a string of prank phone calls.  After days of mockery, they finally get a real phone call, and race off to save a real possessed little girl.  And for a while they do pretty well, especially when Gullu realizes that the ghost is speaking Tamil and uses a picture of superstar Rajnikanth as a holy symbol.  But the problem isn't really solved until Ragini appears and talks to the ghost, learning her motivations.  The boys get paid, and the ghost achieves salvation.

And Phone Bhoot takes off, not as a scam, but as a genuine service.  Major and Gullu help the living, and Ragini helps the dead.  It's a big success, and they have great word of mouth among both humans and ghosts.

What they don't know is that they have competition in the salvation business; sorcerer Atmaran Dhyani (Jackie Shroff) offers salvation to ghosts who commit murder and other evil deeds for him.  Of course, Atmaran is running a scam - the ghosts he promises salvation to are taken to the back room and trapped in bottles.  he does not appreciate the idea of two idiots going around granting salvation to troubled souls for free, and he has plans to deal with them.  Fortunately, his hench-ghosts are also idiots.

Phone Bhoot is a dumb movie, and there's no getting around that fact.  However, it's a hard-working dumb movie, with a plot that might not make sense, but at least fits together as a cohesive narrative.  Running jokes from the first half of the movie actually pay off as plot points in the climax.  And I don't know why award-winning actor Jackie Shroff is even in this movie, but he's clearly having a great time.

There's no real deeper meaning or message here, apart from "Pay attention while you're driving!", but I respect the craft.

The Long Goodbye

RRR is a great movie, but not every Indian movie can be RRR.  And thank goodness for that!  If every movie is a bombastic, testosterone fueled festival of action, then they all start to blend together.  Soemtimes you need a change of pace, like a quirky feel-good family comedy set at a funeral.  And that's where Goodbye (2022) comes in.

Newly minted lawyer Tara Bhalla (Rashmika Mandanna) wins her first case and goes out to a nightclub to celebrate.  She leaves her phone at the club, only finds out that her mother Gayatri (Neena Gupta) has died suddenly when the bartender who returns her phone tells her.  She immediately makes plans to return to her childhood home in Chandigarh to be with her stern and very traditional father Harish (Amitabh Bachchan.)  She decides to leave her live-in boyfriend Mudassar (Shivin Narang) behind, since Harish doesn't approve.

Meanwhile Harish and the family housekeeper Delna (Payal Thapa) are trying to contact the rest of the family.  Oldest brother Karan (Pavail Gulati) and his wife Daisy (Elli Avrram) promptly catch a flight form their home in Los Angeles.  Adopted son Angad (Sahil Mehta) has a bit more trouble, and winds up stuck in Dubai for an extra day.  And nobody can get through to middle son Nakul (Abhishek Khan), who is off climbing a mountain somewhere.

Most of the family finally arrives, though there's still no sign of Nakul, and the preparations for the funeral rites begin, under the direction of busybody neighbor P.P. Singh (Ashish Vidyarthi).  And they bicker; Tara doesn't feel that the very traditional funeral rites are what her not especially traditional mother would have wanted.   Harish doesn't think his sons are taking the rites seriously enough.  P.P. Singh is just kind of patronizing.  And the Greek chorus of neighbors and friends of Gayatri marvel at the goings on; it's definitely sad, but not solemn, as good-hearted people bumble their way through personal loss, trying their best to make everything perfect because it's the only thing they can do.

And then things start to get better.  With the help of an unconventional pandit (Sunil Grover) the family start talking to each other rather than at each other.  Secrets are revealed, but they're generally nice secrets.  Tara and Harish start seeing things from one another's perspective, and Nakul finally shows up.

And that's it.  That's the plot.  People suffer a devastating loss, and they process it onscreen.  It's a very gentle film, very quirky, and above all very human, mixing moments of gentle comedy with Amitabh's big speech.  It's definitely worth a look if you want a change of pace.

No, you can't buy a vowel.

 In the Yama Cinematic Universe, the god Chitragupta is usually cast as Yama's comic sidekick, but he's an important religious figure in his own right, responsible for recording the good and bad deeds each person performs in life, and then judging them accordingly.  In Thank God (2022), Chitragupta takes center stage, but this time, he's cool.

Ayaan Kapoor (Siddharth Malhotra) was once a successful real estate agent who became briefly rich by dabbling in black money, then lost it all during the demonetisation of 2016.  Now, he's struggling to sell his own house. Fortunately, his wife Ruhi (Rakul Preet Singh) is a successful police officer, but Ayaan is so consumed by his losses and stressed over the sale of the house that he's neglecting Ruhi, their daughter Pihu (Kirara Khanna) and his mother (Seema Pahwa).  His relationship with his sister (Urmilla Kanetkar Kathore) is also a bit tense; she's been pouring all her energy and money into rebuilding the family home, because she blames herself for the fire which destroyed it when she and Aayan were children.

After another failed attempt to sell the house (it turns out that locking the potential buyers' son in the bathroom is a bad idea) Ayaan is driving away while bickering with Ruhi on the phone (another bad idea) when he has to swerve to avoid a motorcycle and instead hits another car.  And just like that, he's in Heaven, greeted by Yamdoot (Mahesh Balraj) and a mysterious figure calling himself CG (Ajay Devgn).

CG explains the situation: Ayaan is in critical condition, caught between life and death.  he has to compete in CG's game show and demonstrate that he has overcome his weaknesses; if he succeeds at a challenge, he earns white balls, and if he fails he gets black ones.  Earn more white and he can return to his life, but if he fails, he'll be immediately consigned to Hell.

And the game goers about as well as you'd expect.  Ayaan continues to demonstrate that he has absolutely not overcome his weaknesses, and CG is playing a deeper game than he lets on; all of the tests start to fit together, revealing the harm caused by Ayaan's selfish actions.  It all leads to one final test, one chance for Ayaan to redeem himself, and because he doesn't notice the test when offered, he fails.

Which isn't the end of the movie, obviously; this is a feel good family comedy with a message, and while a happy ending isn't guaranteed, it's pretty likely.  It's a redemption story, A Christmas Carol without the Christmas, Going Postal without the golems.  It's the story of one man learning how connected everything is, and that his actions have consequences for other people.

Thank God is probably not a very good movie, honestly.  It's predictable, the humor is hit and miss, the tone is wildly inconsistent, and the medical science in the climax is complete nonsense even by Bollywood standards.  Still, Devgn is consistently entertaining, and Malhotra manages to be likeable despite playing a complete jerk.  It's earnestly bad in the same way as many Bollywood comedies of the Nineties, so if you liked them, there's a decent chance you'll like this.

Hiatus!

 I'm off to Edinburgh for a few weeks.  Content will resume in January.

That's not how any of this works.

Indian cinema is known for its wild shifts in genre, but Jack N' Jill (2022) really commits to its wild shift in genre. It might not be enough to make it a good movie, but it does at least make it a somewhat more interesting movie.

Kesh (Kalidas Jayaram) is a brilliant scientist who has invented Kuttaaps (Soubin Shahir), a fully functional AI in a box.  he returns to India, accompanied by Kuttaaps and his Norwegian assistant Cheorlett (Ida Sophie Straume), reunites with his grandfather (Nedumudi Venu) and a gaggle of childhood friends, meets his nosy neighbor Tara (Shaylee Krishen), and builds a laboratory out in the forest so that he can complete his father's dream project, Jack N' Jill.

The Jack N' Jill project deals with brain augmentation; according to Kesh, humans use only 10% of their brains but the Jack N' Jill process can raise that to 100%!  This is, of course, complete nonsense that has been thoroughly debunked, and yet that's not the worst science in the movie - it's not even the worst science in that scene!  Kesh wants to skip animal testing and start testing the system on humans.  Specifically, he wants a human with "weak neural connections", and who is not aware that the experiment is taking place.

One of Kesh's buddies is Ravi (Basil Joseph), a man with shady connections and apparently no moral compass.  Ravi promises to find a subject and returns with Anthrappan (Indrans), a man with dementia who believes he's being taken to see his dead wife.  Stage One of Jack N' Jill goes horribly wrong, downloading a large packet of historical data directly into Anthrappan's brain, and he runs off into the forest shouting about Hitler.  Kesh and his team sort of shrug and start looking for their next subject.

Subject Number Two is Parvathy (Manju Warrier), a woman who is so traumatized that she's lost most of her memory, can no longer speak, and carries an iron with her everywhere she goes.  Kesh hooks some electrodes to her scalp, and after a short VR sequence she's speaking, singing, and dancing, and displaying an eclectic range of knowledge.  And you might be thinking, "Oh, it's Bollywood Flowers For Algernon," but no, it's about to get much weirder.

Phase Two involves bombarding Parvathy's brain with images of war and violent conflict.  According to Kesh, further traumatizing the already traumatized woman will give her "advanced survival skills," which is important for some reason.

It's about this time when Kesh meets Steven Tharakan (Sunil Varghese), a local businessman, and Stephen invites him to a talent show.  The original plan is for Parvathy to give a speech about freedom, because kesh has seen My fair Lady one too many times, but Parvathy doesn't want to give a speech so instead the group put together a quick Jazz number.  And during the Jazz number Stephen's son Joseph (Gokul Anand) makes unwanted advances to Tara, so Parvathy steps off the stage, knocks him out with her trusty iron, and collapses.

That's a problem, because Stephen and Joseph are evil businessmen, with a small army of violent goons at their beck and call, and it's increasingly clear that they have something to do with whatever traumatized Parvathy in the first place.  The only person who seems to know what happened is Stephen's adopted daughter Arathi (Esther Anil), but she's trapped in her father's shadow and unable to say anything.

Fortunately, it seems that Parvathy really did pick up incredible fighting skills from Phase Two, because  suddenly the movie is a violent revenge drama in which Parvathy keeps sneaking away from the group to deal with Stephen's men one by one after they try to bury her alive.  And yeah, the bad guys are genuinely vile, and it's viscerally satisfying to see Parvathy take them out through a combination of her newfound martial arts skills, Indian classical dance, and her trusty iron. 

(Also there's a cursory romantic subplot involving Tara's apparently hopeless love for Kesh, but that's treated as an afterthought.)

Ironically, Jack N' Jill is much less horrifying when it's a brutal revenge drama than when it's  a wacky sci-fi comedy about a handsome scientist and his annoying AI sidekick performing unethical experiments without the consent of their test subjects.  The bad guys definitely deserve an iron to the head, but Kesh really ought to be in jail.